stingy adj.: mingy
[This is likely a blended word—also known as a portmanteau word—which combines “mean” and “stingy.” However, in actual usage, it is generally used as a synonym for “stingy” or for the less pejorative “meager.”]
When I wrote skeptically four years ago about the spread of computerized checkout clerks, I said that it was nothing more than a cost-saving conspiracy by mingy merchants who’d devised a way to get the customers to do work they should be paying a clerk to do. That part remains true. Machines work more cheaply than people. And the merchant is getting you, the customer, to do a task that once was part of the service he was being paid to provide. (Dave Addis, “Sometimes, Face-to- Screen Is Better Than Face-to-Face,” Virginian-Pilot, 11/19/2003.)
